


Players and Gamblers

by PengyChan



Category: 999: Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors - Fandom, Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-11
Updated: 2013-04-11
Packaged: 2017-12-08 03:29:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/756500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PengyChan/pseuds/PengyChan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before the Nonary Game, there was Gordain's Game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Players and Gamblers

**Author's Note:**

> While browsing through some 999 headcanons on Tumblr, I came across one that interested me; namely, that Musashidou was a partecipant to one of Gordain's Game back in the day - the last one held while Gordain himself was still alive. I liked the idea, and before I knew it I was writing a oneshot. Here it is.
> 
> There are mentions of violence, but nothing graphic.

**New York, April 1982**

A living corpse.

That had been the first thing Kagechika Musashidou had thought the first time he had seen Lord Dashiell Gordain: a living corpse, with withered and yellowed skin and hollowed cheeks and sunken in eyes, unable to walk anymore and with an oxygen mask always grasped into a hand that looked more like a claw.

Then again, the old man was in his nineties by now; it was a miracle he was even alive. Not to mention, Kagechika has reasoned, that he didn’t have to _like_ the man to borrow some money.

Money that he had borrowed with the intention of giving it back soon, because he was certain he’d bet on the winning horse this time and would get back all the money he had previously lost, sure, no problem. Oh, why, how unfortunate he had lost. But it was no problem, was it now? He could borrow some more money and play again, and this time he’d win, no way he wouldn’t. And of not this time, then he’d win the next, and he could pay back, of course he could, he would, he really would pay off all of his debts and--

“ _Enough_.”

Kagechika Musashidou’s attempts at explaining himself were abruptly cut off by Lord Gordain’s voice; it was raspy, as though he was gargling glass. The old Englishman was looking at him with eyes so narrowed that they were nothing but two slits of pure malevolence, the oxygen mask held tightly in his wrinkled hand. He looked so ancient and so frail, as though a gust of wind could make him turn to dust, and yet there was an air of power around him that was more than enough to keep Kagechika – much younger, much larger, much stronger – glued on his spot, his hands gripping the armrests so hard that his knuckles were turning white.

“You will not pay me back, boy,” he spat out the last word as though it was an insult. “You’re a compulsive gambler, and I’ve lived long enough to know the ones like you never do pay their debts. Let me tell you exactly what will happen the moment I let you out of this study, young man: you’ll go to pump some money out of some friend, given that you have any friends left to pump money out of, but it will not be enough, never enough. But a start, don’t you say? Still, you wouldn’t give it to me. Oh, no. You--”

Kagechika swallowed. “Yes! Yes, I would! I--”

“Quiet!”

The younger man shut his mouth so abruptly that his teeth clicked together.

“I do not appreciate being interrupted, let alone by someone who could very well be my great-grandson,” he drawled. “Is that clear?”

“I… yes. My apologies. But sir, I truly would--”

“No, you wouldn’t. Oh, no. You’d think you need more money than that to pay off your debt, so next thing you’d do would be going to a horse race. Or a card game; I don’t truly care what way you landed yourself in trouble in the first place. But what I _do_ know is that you’d lose it all, as always. And then all you’ll have to give me will be your babblings and promises of paying. I heard them so many times, and I’ve grown so tired of them. So tired,” he repeated, his voice a poisonous hiss that made Kagechika’s hair stand on end.

“N-no, I wouldn’t… of course I can pay, I--”

“Don’t lie to me,” the old man spoke up again, causing him to immediately fall silent. “We both know you cannot. You’re far from the first compulsive gambler I’ve met, my boy. You love it, don’t you? When the horses race and so does your heart, when only a few laps will tell you what the outcome of your gamble will be. Don’t deny it! I know very well what it feels like; I’m a gambler myself. Although, I must say… it’s not horses I see racing,” he gave a sinister, almost completely toothless smile.

Kagechika has to work his jaw a few times before he could speak, and his voice came out pathetically weak. His hands, clammy with sweat, still clung to the armrests.

“Sir, I’m afraid I don’t understa--”

“You will,” Lord Gordain cut him off with a wave of his hand. He stayed silent for a few moments, the hand coming to rest on his lap like a tired bird. “You will. I’ll let you play a game, my boy, one that will allow you to pay me back. One where it won’t only be your fortune on the line, but your very _life_. What better motivation that that?”

A cold shiver ran down Kagechika’s back. “My… life?” he repeated, his mind still unable to fully comprehend what he was hearing. Lord Gordain, however, gave no sign of having even heard him. He was looking past him, a faraway gaze in his eyes.

“You should have seen how we rushed to the safe boats. On the Titanic, seventy years ago. Women and children first? _Pah_! We were running for our lives; nothing we ever held dear before mattered, no honor, _nothing_. There was only survival instinct. You’ll see, Kagechika.”

“Sir…?”

Lord Gordain looked back at him and smiled, the most ominous smile Kagechika Musashidou could remember ever seeing. “There will be a game, and this time you will be the horse. Play it, and your debt will be paid. Live through it, and you’ll be part of a very special circle – that of the winners, of those who _survived_.”

“Wha--?” Kagechika tried to speak, tried to stand up from his seat, but he didn’t get a chance too: someone’s arm was suddenly around his neck, keeping him still, and a cloth was pressed against his mouth and nose.

 _Chloroform_.

Any fight he may have had in him vanished, and he couldn’t move, couldn’t even keep his eyes open – no matter how much he tried to cling to consciousness. He slumped back in the armchair, and the last thing he saw before everything went black was Lord Dashiell Gordain smirking through his transparent oxygen mask.

 

* * *

 

Resting on his back onto a safe boat drifting in hell knew what direction on hell knew what ocean, Kagechika couldn’t help but think that the stars had never looked so close. He almost raised a hand trying to see if he could grab one, but in the end he didn’t. Not because he realized it didn’t even make sense – being thrown into a life-or-death game along with eight other people onto a ship that seemed to be straight from another century, escaping murder, killing two people himself and leaving others to burn certainly did _a lot_ to blur one’s perception of what does or doesn’t make sense – but because he simply had no strength to do so; his arms hurt too much for him to lift them, both from rowing and from _before_.

He would have never imagined how hard stabbing a man to death could be.

And they wouldn’t die, God, _they wouldn’t die_. They would keep struggling, and one of them he had looked straight at him when he could no longer move, when Kagechika had been about to finish him.

Why, he had asked before the knife buried itself in his chest.

_Why._

What an idiotic question. One could wonder why they were in that situation, what had they done to deserve it, why _them_ , but the answer to why they had killed each other without mercy was quite simple: only some of them could get out, and none of them wanted to die. None.

_I don’t want to die._

_Don’t make it harder than _already_ it is._

_Please._

_Just die._

_I don’t want to die._

_Me neither._

And it still hadn’t been enough, because no one wanted to be left behind, no one wanted to burn alive, they all wanted to _get out_. Even if they had realized that was what _he_ wanted, that _he_ wanted them to kill each other with the weapons _he_ had left around the ship, even if they knew they were simply providing him the entertainment he wished, even if they knew they were behaving everything like his puppets. They did not care. They wanted out. Out.

_I don’t want to die._

And so he had made it out, left them cripplingly wounded – and he was wounded, too, but he could still move and time was almost up and he couldn’t finish them, couldn’t use them that mercy – inside the incinerator. And when the room had turned into an inferno, they had screamed and screamed and screamed so loud that he had heard them even while painstakingly climbing up to safety, and he knew he would never forget those screams.

But it did not matter. They had died, they all had died, but he was alive. He would be fine.

_I don’t want to die._

But perhaps, Kagechika tiredly reasoned, perhaps he would, after all. He was wounded and he was weak, onto a safe boat in the middle of hell knew what ocean. There was nothing but blackness and ocean as far as eye could see, and there was little water, and no food. He wouldn’t last long.

But he had won, God, he had _won_. He had survived. He had beaten that game – certainly they wouldn’t leave him to die _now_! He refused to! He--

There was a sudden, blinding light straight on him, and he shut his eyes. He weakly raised his arm to shield his face, and heard someone shouting.

“Here! He’s still alive!”

Kagechika Musashidou’s memory of being helped onto another safe boat and then onto a ship would forever stay blurry; next thing he’d know was slumping on the deck of a ship, _another_ ship, and there were several elegantly dressed men looking down at him, but he barely noticed them: the only one had could see, the one he could not tear his gaze from, was Lord Dashiell Gordain. The old man smiled and gestured for someone to move his wheelchair closer to Kagechika. And then, once he was right above him, he learn a little forward and held out his claw-like hand.

“It seems that we have a winner,” he said, his voice rotting honey. “You won your game; I won my bet. Your debt has been paid for.”

“Y-you…” Kagechika gasped, trying to stand up but only succeeding in lifting himself on his knees. The blanket someone had thrown over his shoulders fell off, but he did not notice. He reached down to press a hand on his stomach, where his worst wound was, and looked up to see again the men standing in silence behind Gordain. “All of you… who…?”

“Survivors,” Gordain’s voice was calm now, his hand still held out. “Each and every person here is a survivor. So you are now. Will you claim your place among us?”

Kagechika Musashidou knew then, in that very instant, that refusal was not an option. But he also knew that accepting meant that he would never again – _never again_ – be the one to awaken into a ghost ship and have to fight and kill for his life. His life would never again be on the line. He’d never again be a player.

He’d be a gambler, like he had always been.

And he would never again lose a bet.

Once a winner, always a winner.

He reached up to take Gordain’s hand to help himself up, his left hand still pressed on the wound on his stomach. The old man was smirking, and Kagechika found himself smirking back.

He had _won_.


End file.
